News has come out in the past few days about changes to the terms of service at Draft2Digital. They are instituting a membership fee for new accounts, and also charging an annual “maintenance fee” for existing accounts.

The change is concerning to me, since D2D is my main publishing platform. I’ve found their service reliable and let’s just say the fee-free environment was a bonus for me. In fact, D2D is really the dominant platform for Indy writers since 1) they have bought up several competitors and 2) Amazonm B&N and other platforms have previously made some arbitrary changes to their terms of service, too.

D2D’s rationale is that they are being flooded with AI-generated bookspam from “content mills” and it’s overwhelming their platform. Some of these dubious outfits were uploading hundreds of books a day, making it difficult for D2D’s quality assurance to keep up. Once they began rejecting spam titles, the spammers started opening dozens of accounts and uploading 1 or 2 books for each. D2D is instituting the fee for new accounts to try and combat this.

Since there’s been widespread reporting of SF/Fantasy magazines being flooded with spam submissions, this rationale does make some sense. They now have submission windows and other devices that make it nearly impossible to submit work there. But hey, they don’t have to deal with that terrible slush pile any more!

More troublesome is the “maintenance fee,” which is being charged to authors like me who publish regularly but only sell a few copies. You have to sell at least $100 of books in a year to avoid the fee. Since most of my sales are in person through book tables, and they are not counting author copies as sales, I will never be able to meet this arbitrary standard.

It stings. I am the baby being thrown out with the bath water. Unless I pay up, of course.

In this case I feel D2D is trying to get rid of writers they deem not profitable enough — for them. It’s just another corporation deciding to “monetize” their creative partners. In fact, I’ve heard some commentary that the aggressive acquisition of competitors has undermined D2D behind the scenes, and that’s why they have to monetize Indy writers.

All this said, I likely will pay the fee. I do have the expectation of selling enough copies to cover it. I’ll just never see any additional royalties from D2D, if it all goes to their fees. Unfortunately, there are few reputable alternatives. D2D has bought up a lot of them.

Anyhow, if you know of a reliable self-publishing platform besides Amazon or D2D, I’d be interested to hear about your experiences.

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